


Liminality

by yonnna



Category: Baccano!
Genre: F/F, Pining, References to Abuse, huey and essa are sorta there too but not enough to tag them, suicide ideation, when will i stop talking about hands?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-02
Updated: 2017-02-02
Packaged: 2018-09-21 12:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9549026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonnna/pseuds/yonnna
Summary: There are so few who ever truly knew Monica Campanella. She does not claim to be one of them, but she will fill the gap they leave as best she can.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has some undertones of Mask Maker ot4 since that’s the only context I could think of where Niki/Monica makes sense. If you can call it Niki/Monica. This is 100% pining. When will I ever write happy Niki??

Monica Campanella steps into her life like an actress who mishears her cue; she is not _supposed_  to be there, and she is given no direction, but she strides on with the confidence that comes with knowing it is too late to retreat. Enter stage right, a courageous whirlwind of white fabric and blond hair, tearing through the commotion to sweep her up. Her rescuer acts every bit the hero, but — she gets the sense — _she_  is not the one she wishes to save. She glances over her shoulder as she runs, but her blue eyes are focused somewhere beyond the nameless girl she drags behind her. Niki holds fast to a hand that longs to hold _someone else’s_. 

_Huey! Are you alright?_

Her saviour let’s go of her hand; no longer needing to be as much, for she has been _saved._ She rushes to his side without another word to her. She is grateful, even so — grateful and afraid, and so consumed by dread and pain that the petty ache of not being the first priority doesn’t register. In her life she has rarely seen a person’s face painted with concern; she does not dare to thinkthat she should be the subject of it.

Her saviour never does ask if _she’s_  alright. This is not the role she set out to play, and she cannot be blamed for lacking the right lines to speak. The boy she fawns over poses the question in her stead. _What about you?_ His voice is as empty as her own, and offers little in the way of warmth or comfort. She tells him she’s fine and lets her bloodied lip and swelling cheek tell the truth. 

“You shouldn’t get involved with me anymore.” 

Her story does not have _heroes_. She is meant to die. She has spent too many hours resigning to this truth, too many nights convincing herself it is for the best, convincing herself that she and the others like her should never have existed at all. She almost feels _bitter_  to have been saved so thoughtlessly, so flippantly, when she has put so much effort into binding herself to fate. 

But Monica Campanella strides, with footsteps at once confident and out of time, into a scene that does not belong to her — and plays the part she must, not caring how her improvisation has thrown Niki’s well-rehearsed future off script. 

To her, it is a forgettable moment; to Niki, it is a focal point. She cannot decide whether she holds love or resentment for this girl who drags her out of the darkness as though it is a _simple_  thing to do. 

It is only when she learns that she is also the monster who had _promised_ her that darkness that she knows — she knows to call it love, because her hands have granted her both freedom to live and freedom to die. There is no greater gift than the right to _decide_ ; her volition, her autonomy, the deeds to ownership of her own self. The right to break, the right to heal, the right to fade away. 

In three hundred years time, she will not remember the way Monica’s hand had felt holding hers. On hazy days she will swear she dreamt her; who would dare touch her hands, dirtied with the sin of her existence? Only a monster, and so this is the Monica who lives in her memory, the one who fits best into her narrative. On quiet nights she will recall the care in her eyes; a girl, soft yet bold, and a boy, jagged yet gentle, and she, a stranger between them. She will not remember the way her hand had felt; she will never be convinced she was meant to know. 

 

* * *

 

 

Niki cannot describe how she ends up alone with Monica Campanella again — except that it is the same way she ends up anywhere; with no intentions or sense of belonging, dragged under by the sea and crashing onto a new shore in a wave. There’s a strong current which pulls her mercilessly towards things bigger than herself, and she would swim against it if she only _could_. 

She isn’t supposed to know — Elmer had told her it wasn’t _for_ her to know — but Count Boronial has been so kind to her, and he wears his worries on his sleeves so she cannot ignore them. _She’s my sister_ , he says with such great strain that she can feel the tightening in her own throat, _I only wish I could ease her loneliness_. He looks at her as though she might be the answer, and she does not have the heart to tell him she is not. The stars beneath his eyes seem to glow when she nods, a constellation ignited by hope.

“I told you, I don’t want to —” Her saviour greets her with a start.

No, _not_  her saviour — _Monica_. She is Monica, the girl, fair hair dishevelled as she lifts her head from her pillow. Monica, red-faced and puffy-eyed, her bold edges blurred by tremors. She wonders in this moment if  _this_  is the person who had taken her hand that day, this scattered puzzle — not the put together, heroic thing, and not the masked villain — or perhaps she had been all of them at once.

They are not alike, but in that moment they are the same.

“If Elmer sent you over, you can tell him I don’t care anymore —”

What does she do? All that she _can_ : she cannot keep Monica’s head above the water, but she has enough experience drowning to teach her how to hold her breath. 

If she has learned anything from broken bones and bruised skin it is that empathy is not enough, but sometimes it is all there is. In the workshop, where words were not allowed to pass, the greatest kindnesses had been tucked away in the smallest gestures; a pat on the shoulder that lingers a second longer than it should, fingers which brush through her hair gently in passing, hands which bandage injuries with care but do not intervene when a life wishes to end. Theirs is a physical language by necessity.

When she sits down beside her Monica draws away like a wounded animal, but she reaches out to lay a hand on her arm and she crumples at the touch, fingers furling into the fabric of her dress; the paradox of a body that longs to hold something real and a heart that cannot bear to be touched. 

“Because it — it doesn’t matter! If he can’t love me — no, of course he can’t… I don’t deserve that. He can’t a-a-and —”

Perhaps in a better world she would be able to speak some reassurance, but she does not have the words to say that Monica deserves love — the concept of deserving _anything_  is foreign. She brushes matted hair out of her face strand by strand. 

“I know,” is all she can offer. 

“Why are you here?”

She asks herself the same question, and answers: because of waves and coincidences and her brother’s aching grief and the pull of something bigger than herself, because of her and her actions and all of the ten thousand people she has been to her. Nothing comes out of her mouth. 

“Why isn’t _he_  here —? I —”

“I don’t know.”

“W-What do I — what am s-supposed to —”

A small sigh.

“I wish I knew.”

She must frown a little bit too much like he does — colder and more distanced than she would choose to be. They have always been similar in that respect; she does not have the energy to hate the world, and he does not have the restraint to be indifferent towards it, but they carry the same misery with them, the same blunt honesty, sad eyes and down-turned lips —

Lips which Monica’s press against searchingly in the hopes of finding more of him hidden in her. She has never kissed him, which makes it easier to imagine, for a long moment, that her kiss feels the same — and she returns it, not because she is naive, but because she has been used in many ways by many people, and if she will be used again she will _choose_ it. 

“I-I’m — I’m s-so _sorry —_ ”

She pulls away and covers her mouth with a shaking hand. Niki recognises in her wide eyes the dawning realisation that the person she is looking at is not the person she _needs_  her to be. It is familiar, even after four years; she has already forgotten how her hand had felt holding hers, but she will never forget how she had looked _through_  her, as though she had picked the wrong person to save. Perhaps she had. Perhaps she has again. Perhaps she always will. 

She does not let herself wonder how long it will be before she forgets the way her lips felt on hers. 

“I shouldn’t have —”

“It’s fine.”

“You’re not supposed to kiss people you don’t love — I-I don’t know why I…”

“Like I said, it’s fine.” 

They sit in silence for a long time after this, and the world is a fraction off where it should be. When the Count knocks on the door and invites her to stay for dinner, she excuses herself instead. 

“I truly believe you would do her good. Just having you here for her —”

“I’m sorry, my lord, but a person like me can’t do _anyone_ good.”

She is content to be a stand-in, to belong to moments that will never factor in to the story of her life, but Monica would not be less lonely for it.

 

* * *

 

 

The next time she sees Monica it is through the cracks of prison bars. She hands the letter over to the guard mutely, the red of the insignia a brighter burning mark of shame than it had been, and tries to smile at the woman, the monster, the girl, the hero, the villain, whoever she is in that moment — who had saved her, and who she does  _not_ saved in return. When she leaves her eyes are cast on her hands, searching for splotches, ink or wax or blood. They are deceptively clean; she will never be. 

In three hundred years time she will still ask herself what role she had played. If she could have read those letters, what would she have found? How much good, and how much harm? Even when she learns to read she will find that in her memory those words remain abstract, black ink swirled in neat dips and curls. She had watched him write them, some nights, and the strokes of his quill had been so _elegant_ , so beautiful. It is difficult to think on the ugliness beneath.

 

* * *

 

 

Her funeral is an intimate ceremony.

No, not intimate.

A more accurate term is _lacking_.

Her lover drops off the face of the earth not long after her passing. Some whisper that he has joined her in death, while others suggest that he runs from the implications of guilt — perhaps he had been involved with her crimes, some say — perhaps he had been involved with her death, say others. With confidence, Elmer tells her he doesn’t believe **either** ; Huey Laforet wouldn’t take his own life, he certainly didn’t take _hers_ , and what he _does_  take is pride in his crimes, too much to run from them. When asked what this tells them about the truth of his absence, he can only shrug. 

 _I guess we’ll find out if he turns up again_. 

It’s the absence that makes the difference, not the reason for it. 

The journey to the service is fairly lengthy — the only church lays just on the city lines — and she cannot help imagining what the Count will look like in mourning; his vibrant colours muted, his stars wiped out by the cataclysm of this loss. The thought of it burdens her so much that it is almost a relief that he does not make an appearance, until the tragedy of it settles over her. _She is my sister_ , he had once told her, in tones that betrayed both a deep sadness and a deep fondness — but in the eyes of the city he rules she is nothing but the monster who killed his family. His grief will forever be _political_. 

The townspeople do not attend, either, nor the other students from the Third Library — not even the patisserie owner to whom she had been a ward — all for fear of the Dormentaires. This is a ceremony exclusively for those who have nothing to lose, and of these there are _two_. 

She stands shoulder to shoulder with a man who can smile through anything, and listens as the priest says his blessings over an empty casket, feeling again as though she is a stand in for someone dearer, _closer_. There are so few who ever truly knew Monica Campanella. She does not claim to be one of them, but she will fill the gap they leave as best she can. 

She wonders if Elmer feels the same. What an odd thing it is to have not quite loved her — yet to have loved her too much to dismiss. To be _almost_ the person this moment calls for, yet _not_. 

When the blessings are said and the dirt is laid, they are left to themselves, odd pieces that they are; they are from the same puzzle, no doubt, but their edges do not fit together.

“I don’t normally go to funerals. There’s too much frowning.”

An unspoken _but_  hangs in the air. He doesn’t normally go to funerals, but here he is. This is _different_. He doesn’t have to explain why.

“I’ve been to a few,” she replies simply. Those had been sendings off of the already damned, and had never felt like a tragedy. This is different. 

“You look nice,” he says, grinning far too wide. “Is that a new dress?”

“Mr. Fermet bought it for me.”

“That’s kind of him!”

“I’ve told you before, he’s very kind.”

She nods slowly, tugging at the fabric of her sleeve; it’s soft, comfortable, nothing like the clothes she’d worn as a slave. _Red suits you_ , he’d told her. She thinks back to the red sealing every letter she’d delivered and wonders _how well_.  

“Did you know white used to be the colour of mourning? It’s too bad that changed!”

“ _White_? That would be too bright.”

“Exactly! It’d really lighten things up!”

“Elmer, you’re — you’re r-ridic — ridiculous —”

She chokes the word out in spite of the clenching in her throat, and then she is lost to tears — how long had they been welling up inside her? She feels too empty to have been holding in such heaving sobs. She tries to breathe, tries to let the tears fall without fighting against them. Struggling always makes things _worse_. 

“Don’t cry, Niki. Give us a smile!”

She presses her palms against her eyes. _Breathe, breathe, breathe_. Now isn’t the time for drowning. 

“… That’s really insensitive, Elmer,” she says after a long moment and a deep breath, lowering her hands by a fraction. “Not that I’m _surprised_.”

A smile she does not deliver, but she wipes away tears with her sleeve. 

“Was she — was it painful at the end? I heard that you and Huey —”

“I don’t think so. She was wearing the prettiest smile I’ve ever seen.”

 _The prettiest smile he’s ever seen_. He is such a blunt creature, she doesn’t doubt it when he says it. Monica had found what _she_  still searches for, then: a way to die happily. Something about this knowledge softens the pain in her chest. 

“That’s… That’s good. I wish I could have seen it.”

“You never know. Maybe you will, one day.”

“What do you mean? I’m not going to end up where she is.”

“I dunno, I think the church got that wrong.” 

She furrows her brow. She has no love lost for the church or for god, yet she is certain she is irrefutably and irredeemably damned; of all the things the church gets wrong, _this_  is not it. 

“If there’s an afterlife, it shouldn’t be split between good people and bad people — it should be split between people who smile and people who don’t!”

“That’s awful, Elmer — what about the people who _can’t_  smile?”

“They just have to try harder, then they can move on with everyone else!”

“You’re unbelievable, saying things like that in a churchyard —”

She shakes her head. 

“I guess I should shut up, huh?”

“You don’t _have_  to.”

Even nonsense sounds like comfort if one longs for it enough. 

They leave the cemetery hand in hand and walk for hours. The ocean breeze sings to the city but only they hear the words. They climb the hills. On the paths once tread by four sets of feet, flowers bloom; daisies yellow as her hair and forget-me-nots blue as her eyes. They pick some, and rather than lay them at her grave he tucks one behind his ear and braids one into her hair; there is more of her in them than in that casket.

They mourn, in their own ways — tears to water the plants and smiles like sunlight to feed them — for a friend, for a monster, for a criminal, for a ghost.

 

* * *

 

 

She does not voice her suspicions to Huey or Elmer; she considers it, but in the end she decides it would do more harm than good. If the child is not who she supposes, it would only raise their hopes for a harder fall, and if he is — there must be a reason Fermet would lie about it. He’s a kind man, and a better person than she is. She trusts his judgement and follows his lead, not questioning his story, but accepting her own truth in her heart. 

She is very good at _not knowing_ things she very much knows; it is something she has been practicing since a masked monster spun her into a tale too big for her little life.

He tells her the orphan had been born to one of his relatives, as though she would not know those blue eyes on sight, as though she could ever mistake the gift her rescuer has left behind for a stranger’s — and it _is_  a gift, she thinks. Forgiveness, of sorts, or a chance at it. He is redemption wrapped up in a bundle of cloth. 

Monica had never _needed_  her, but she is reminded with every cry and every tiny smile that this child does. When she holds him in her arms she remembers every kindness every version of his mother has ever shown her; her touches may escape her but her presence never will. Her name will forever be synonymous with _saviour_. 

In some ways she supposes that she is still a stand-in. Perhaps where Monica is concerned she always will be — but this child deserves love, and if she must be a stand-in she will be the best one she can be. _She_ decides this.

Monica Campanella always _has_ given her the right to decide.

 

* * *

 

 

In three hundred years time she will have many nightmares, delivered to her in clouds of smoke and fire, searing pain and deafening noise. Some nights these visions will end with a whirlwind of white fabric and blonde hair and the gentle touch of a hand leading her away. She will call these ones _dreams_. 


End file.
